Skillful praxis, skillful means

As a meditation teacher I must believe that the practice of being still is inherently valuable; that ‘being’ informs ‘doing’, that action comes from mind, from our thoughts, intentions, dreams, and desires.

There is more. Coming to stillness is not just an absence of movement. It is a journey into another realm; it is committing to relating to experience itself in a new way. It is also seeing that what we call our self is an invention, a concoction, and ruse. . . .

As a coach, a facilitator of change, I must also believe that there is no single way, no single view of things, no construct, no metaphysical representation, no psychological lens with which to view the world, that is automatically sufficient, nor even that is inherently true.

Any ‘true’ system dissolves its own tenets, sees through itself, and would claim for itself only that it is a skillful praxis —a movement towards freedom. Freedom being something you can define only by saying what it is not. Because it is not conditional on anything. It has no intrinsic qualities.

Why is this so hard to get?

Buddhist teaching in one sentence, “Everything is interconnected, therefore everything matters.”

The first and most important thing to know for living, working, surviving the twenty-first century, developing amazing relationships, running a successful business, practicing Permaculture, Medicine, History, Architecture, Farming, or any other deep Art:
“Everything is interconnected, therefore everything matters.”

The first and most important thing to know and practice for doing anything whatsoever—in one word (two, actually):
“Kindness, love.”

Buddhist teaching in two words: “Kindness, love.”

Ideas and Expereince

Ideas arrive fresh as an ocean breeze. If the mind is the cause of what we experience in our life, then all the circumstances we experience are the effects. Of course, the two are intertwined and together co-create the fierce power of life, which is love, which is presence, and energy, and creativity. How you name it is not important. I do not want to oversimplify or make a platitude. This is a model, a metaphor; and hopefully, it is also a tool.

It is something you can feel behind your own eyes, this freedom, or see it in the eyes of others. You can feel it inside your own heart, and in the words and presence of others. . . . . If you want.

When you stop imagining that anything can oppress you—and you CAN choose to do that—you understand that your only choice is freedom! Freedom is unconditional, not because it has no flavor or particularity (it is as rich and varied as life itself), but because there is nothing that can ever pollute its many flavors. Anything, any situation, can open the door to this freedom if you let it, and where it leads you is as particular as who you are. Unique!

Understand that it is not freedom ‘from’ something. Nor is it freedom ‘toward’ something. It is not permission nor is it the lifting of restrains. It is something altogether beyond those singular functions.

A hawk lifts off the telephone line, and hovers; or a swan flies up from the water, soaring and soaring, until almost out of sight. And a distant galaxy, barely visible with the naked eye on a dark night, does cartwheels across the sky.


--"Mysticism, poor mysticism! When it is underestimated and oversimplified, it comes down from its original sphere and stands beside religion. But even here if a person is sincere, he will realize that his highest religious experience is nothing more than an uncertain, obscure and faint perception of Truth; whereas, no matter what kind of mystical experience he has, he will feel the intensity, immensity and certainty of Truth." Chinmoy

Fire

Thanks to everyone who contacted us last week with concerns about the fires in San Diego county. We are fine, and Manzanita Village is unscathed, though we are now hearing from friends who lost their homes.

I am also hearing that for the most part people are in amazingly good spirits. There were reports last week of people evacuated to the Qualcomm Stadium in San Diego who were singing together and dancing, and enjoying each other's company, even though some knew that their house had burned to the ground.

Someone I know said, "It's okay, I've been through things much worse than this. The family is safe, we're okay!" As if it takes a fire like this to remind us of our priorities and to bring us back to our basic appreciation and gratitude for what we have.

What I do now

To see the world anew, to change old responses, to disentangle from singular points of view. To let rigidity turn to flexibility. To breathe. To rely on kindness . . .

What I learned when I was first studying gestalt and hypnotherapy twenty years ago was that the client tells you everything you need to know.

Now I extend that to mean: let the world tell you what you need to know. Everything is a sign, both of itself, and of something beyond itself. So, as a coach, as a teacher, as a human being, my task is to learn to read the magic of the world. Magic, because it is not visible at first. Then, as each layer peels away, it’s hard to imagine that what is underneath was ever invisible.

I don't want to assign any special power to myself. What I am describing is available to anyone who takes the trouble to look.

Now as a coach and hypnotherapist, and as a teacher and workshop leader, my basic work is to turn this process into a collaboration, and to transmit as fully as I can the understanding that change is absolutely possible, and that entirely new ways of being, thinking, and feeling are actually available. All you need is enough commitment to begin the process.

The work has become so effective that clients have sometimes forgotten why they came to it in the first place. In a few short weeks they have transformed their life, and now wonder why they ever had the notion that they needed help<

I have to remind them why they came, then tell them how truly capable they are, and how brilliant they are at solving problems!

Drive Yourself Sane!

After years of pulling against the elastic chains of a Buddhist identity I succumbed last June to the exquisite recognition (not that I hadn’t been exploring this, writing about it, teaching it – for years!) that no single idea is fundamentally better than any other; that perceptions, and the ideas that we derive from them, are overlays, projections, extraneous extras!

I understood on some new, and much deeper level, that identity/ies really are overlays. We can simply peel them away. You’d think that after decades of Buddhist practice, and after changing my sex, I would have understood something about this. Now doubt I did; it's just that such things are like journeys, always inviting you further into uncharted lands.

It’s strange and interesting how change itself gets reified, charted, fossilized into the constructs we make of it – ‘impermanence’ as an item of faith among Buddhist dogmatists, or gender deconstruction as its own version of tyranny in the hands of certain feminists and gender queer folks.

And still we live in a world of monumental violence and destruction, oppression, denial and mind-boggling stupidity. So I have also come to appreciate, more than ever, the essential need for exquisite and complete accountability and flawless integrity.

And that’s another can of worms right there!

Science and Sanity by Alfred Korzybski
Drive Yourself Same by Susan and Bruce Kodish